[Kiddalee]'s BBC Overflow #3

(back to BBC of Kidda Overflow)

May 2007 - September 2006: Nipissing Year

UNIVERSITY READING ENDS

She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith, 63 pages
  I've finally finished it! Actually, I finished it a week ago. I've finally posted here! This is a 1700s comedy. Funny... yes. Anything else I have to say? Well, I wasn't dying to finish it, if that means anything to you. I guess it's worth a read, though.

Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Match Girl, adapted and ill. Jerry Pinkney, 32 pages
  The classic tale is brought to early 1900s America. The illustrations seem American enough, but I don't see any part of the text that is so different from the original tale.

89.Poetry.Mature.Her Night by [Askoga]

415.Miscellaneous.MATURE CONTENT.Peace Before by [Annie]

150.Poetry.One Last Time by [Jenna Rose]

Nexus Volume 7, #1, Summer 1994, ed. Simon Thompson, 52 pages
  I picked up this litmag from the ~FREE BOOKS~ display outside the English offices. I don't know if Nexus is still circulating, but if it is, I intend to add it to Magazine Listings.
  I found it disappointing. Most of the poetry is too deep to be enjoyable (meaning I won't be able to understand it without doing some serious work). The stories are alright. However, the cartoons are mostly good.

Honourable mentions from Nexus:

Habib George by GP Lainsbury, 24 pages
  This sarcastic metafiction is told in a fun, casual, but still intelligent, tone. A lot of it is hilarious. It culminates to an exciting climax, but I find that the ending is disappointing.
  You may find this story boring, in spite of the clever narrative style. That's because not much goes on. Well, I liked most of it.

Sananguatuk by Edith Van Beek, 1 page
  One of the only understandable poems in the mag. "Sananguatuk is PRETENDING TO WORK". Edith connects herself to other Inuit carvers in this free verse poem about soapstone. If I knew whether this was her heritage, I might say more.


The Key by Mark Cyr, 6 pages
  The winner of Wyn Lit's 24 Hour Short Story Writing Contest for April.
  Abigail is a spoiled, but well educated socialite. On the day her cook must take leave of her, she goes to the grocery store to pick up a can of smoked clams. When she fails to recognize the legendary contents of the recalled stock, she moves quickly into her fate.

An Experiment with an Air Pump by Shelagh Stephenson, 77 pages
  Finally I've finished reading it! This was the last play of our drama unit in English, and it was a very good read. I'm not sure how much I'd enjoy the metadrama aspect of it if I were actually watching it, but I found the text interesting and page-turning.
  This book is one example of why I am in love with the university atmosphere. Rarely do I see such intelligence outside uni. It deals with issues like our optimism for the future of knowledge and technology, and wakes us up to the fact that we alone will never attain the heavenly level of advancement to which we think we are growing. After all, we have thought that to the stale end of many periods in history, the Scientific Revolution being one of them.

The Blue Day Book: A Lesson in Cheering Yourself Up by Bradley Trevor Greive, 93 pages
  Yes, it's this guy again. You see, I was quite sad yesterday, as I'd failed at a job interview, so my landlady recommended this to me. Funny. When my friend recommended the other one to me, I was de-energized indoors (but beyond energized outdoors).
  Well, it's more of the same. The narrator starts talking about how awful the reader might be feeling, and there are cute, funny animal pictures above each phrase. But, as soon as the narrator starts giving advice, you realize that this shallow, clicheed bull was only written to compliment the animal photos. So you don't take the writing seriously, but you rather enjoy the pictures, and the way the clauses below joke about them.
  I only recognize one photo in this book, that I've seen in the last one. It's good that Bradley isn't just reusing old material all the time, then.
  Now, I don't know how much one of these little gift books costs, but if all you care about is the animals, just go to www.imreallysad.com instead. However, the writing paired with each photo is kind of helpful.

CHICKENS! CHICKENS! by Barbara Ann Porte ill. Greg Henry, 26 pages
  I know so little about American racism and the black identity in America. This book attempts to foster self-esteem in black kids through its story and illustrations. The story is just a regular life story. Interestingly enough, it is the illustrations that make it particularly related to the black identity. The narrative seems to have some characteristics of diction that I wouldn't normally see in white work, but I doubt I'd recognize it if it weren't for the illustrations.
  Sometimes, I wonder about certain questionable aspects of society this book doesn't comment on, but African American culture is something I am very poorly schooled in. Besides, you can't expect kids to take a million things in at once, can you? Well, I felt that certain gender roles seemed problematic in the beginning, but they were smoothed out a little in the end. I suppose I have plenty of time to think about the black identity. Besides, I had just come out of my Gender class.

Tomorrow: Adventures in an Uncertain World by Bradley Trevor Greive
  Lots of those clicheed mottos you hear about how to live a good, peaceful, and genuinely successful life. Philosophy, I guess. The more important part is the cute animal pictures. Some of them are funny, especially next to the statements they are paired with.

Speaking Terms by Reese Buchanan, 4 pages
  A man comes to terms with his distant father's death.
  This story won the Wyn Lit Short Story Writing Contest of 2006. I found it in Wyn Lit magazine. I'm still getting to know this publication. Wyn Lit is extremely new, and has more ads than stories, but it is published by Wynterblue Thunder, which is somewhat better established. There appear to be two more publications by Wynterblue Thunder. I've yet to find out much of them.  See www.wynter.ca

Every piece currently online by [sanctuary1]
  All of these are passionate. Most are dark.
  They vary in quality. They also vary in violence, language, and sexual content, so watch out.

The Old Cabin by Michael Hans Rose
  This poem can currently be found on http://www.wynter.ca/NFhome.htm.
  I don't favour the technical qualities of the poem, but the actual plot, theme, and characters, are beautiful and moving.
  And by the way: Whee! I found a new litmag!

89.The Ivory Man and 89.The Kiss by [Askoga]

5.Contest Entries.Staying Lost by [Kaimee]

243.mousey's Poetry.Senryu4 by [mousepoet]

642.Poetry.Hearts by [aVorbiss]

135.Contest entries.FiveWordsJan by [Calann]
  I highly recommend this short piece!

Excerpt from Pu Suling (P'u Su-ling) (is that the author?) The Bonds of Matrimony, from the 1600s
  This is another of the many readings I was given for my history project.
  This is the (chapter) after which a man's concubine has just falsely accused the man's wife of adultery, and he is pretending to believe her because he likes her better.
  Now, the wife is planning a divorce. Luckily, her father is willing to take her back. She sure doesn't have any support within the household, except maybe from her maids.
  It is unlikely that anybody will want to marry a divorced woman, and she has a stain on her name due to the accusation, even if her parents don't believe it. Her life is ruined.
  So, she decides to kill herself in a way that will bring dishonour to her family of marriage. It wasn't very uncommon, so I hear from my history book.
  Because this is an excerpt, it took me a while to figure out who everybody was. Once I understood the context, and the roles of the characters behind the names, I began to really love this piece. There is a beautiful poem at the end of this excerpt. It's like a senryu, except that it's Chinese, and you wouldn't understand the image without first reading the (chapter).
  I really want to read this whole story. It's old enough to be public domain. I wonder if I can find it on Project Gutenberg or something.

Mother-in-law Is Cruel by Zheng Xie (Cheng Hsieh), from the 1700s
  This is one of the readings for my short history paper on the Confucian family model. By what would have been the Western renaissance, some Chinese authors were beginning to criticize many of the abuses that the Confucian heirarchical family made possible.
  This poem is about an unusually young bride (even by ancient Chinese standards), who must serve her in-laws, and endures disgusting abuses at the hands of her mother-in-law. Because of the power of the elder over the younger, she does not tell her birth family that anything is truly wrong, nor do her husband or father-in-law stop the woman.
  There are two lines of sympathy for the mother-in-law. She is worried about being supplanted by her son's young, pretty wife. After all, the boy will someday become old enough even to direct his mother, when his father dies. So we see how people with little enough power to want to struggle for it, end up competing with and distrusting each other.
  This is not the first piece of literature I've read in which an older woman is cruel to a younger woman. Indeed, the need to vie for the favour of men seems to have led many women to cruelty against each other. I wonder if it has even contributed to Electra complexes. I have long stopped taking the evil stepmothers in European fairy tales for granted.

135.Contest entries.Senryu by [Calann]

Holy Bible, Paul's Epistle to the Romans (NASB)

Holy Sonnet XIV by John Donne (published 1633), "Batter my heart, three person'd God..."


Week 1 of my English class's poetry unit: lyric, carpe diem, sex

The Nimphs reply to the Sheepheard by Sir Walter Ralegh, c. 1600

The Passionate Sheepheard to his Love by Christopher Marlowe, published 1600

The Unequal Fetters by Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, published 1713

The Sick Rose by William Blake, published 1794 in Songs of Experience

To the Virgins, to make much of Time by Robert Herrick, published 1648


Holy Bible, Revelation (NASB)

79.Contest Entries.Senryu by [Mister Saint]

Walt Disney's Cinderella, 40 pages
  Yep, it's a Disney cartoon movie book. Not one of those huge A4-sized ones, though. This one's more normal sized.

415.Poetry.The World by [Annie]

Telling by Carol Matas, 120 pages
  Three teenage sisters gather for sessions of telling their deepest secrets to each other, and talk dealing with issues of being loved for what others want, or being true to oneself.

226.Poetry.Two by [Nell]
226.Poetry.Senryu by [Nell]

619.Poetry.Thy Beauty by [Samael_22]
619.Poetry.Forever Lasts by [Samael_22]

415.Poetry.Turtledove by [Annie]

50 Below Zero by Robert Munsch ill. Michael Martchenko, 19 pages
  The illustrations in this book are so Canadian, it's awesome. The mom and dad are kind of like my mom and dad. The toys are like my toys. The winter is so cool! Ugh, no pun intended.

Nineteen Fifty-five by Alice Walker, 17 pages
  This a story of a black woman who sold her song to Elvis, and how he could never be any more than a pop star reciting it, but all the little white girls loved him anyways. Professor Lee gave her lecture on how this story reflects a trend in America's music industry, citing the cake walk and Eminem.
  I suppose it's there, but it's not the greatest thing I see in the story. The greatest thing I see is how Gracie Mae Still is content in her humble life, and knows what art really is, and is happy enough with that. It is contrasted with Traynor, who is too busy being rich and famous to actually live. And he knows it, but he won't get out of it. At the end, he dies before Gracie Mae, who is technically older than him.

It's A Magical World: A Calvin and Hobbes Collection by Bill Watterson, 165 pages
  Don't waste your youth pretending to be old. Don't shorten it, either.

415.Poetry.Love's Battle by [Annie]

619.Poetry.There I sat by [Samael_22]
619.Poetry.What I See by [Samael_22]

Holy Bible Epistles of John (NASB)
  I did the first one very slowly, and then read the other two in one night. They're hard to understand.

Come Not When I Am Dead by Alfred Lord Tennyson
found at http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Come_not%2C_when_I_am_dead
  I agree, in fewer words. When I'm dead, I'll be dead. Why the heck should you care about my corpse? I won't. I don't need you to care about my legacy, either. I won't. I'll only excuse you for caring about my death to the extent to which you were emotionally tied to me, and need to grieve.

Holy Bible, Hosea (NASB)
  The minor prophet Hosea lived a life of modelling human marriage as a metaphor for Christ's marriage to the Church. There is more to it than that. There are some very harsh rebukes and prophecies. It can be hard to take.

Holy Bible, Song of Solomon (NASB)
  One of my youth leaders thinks this book could get too erotic for unmarried people to read, but I didn't really find it harmful to me at all. It all depends on whether you want to get turned on by some of the stuff in there or not. It still has some beautiful poetry and interesting wisdom.

39.NaNoWriMo.2006: Tales from Kyerrion by [Veltzeh]
  A sci-fi about a young soldier in a civilization with 12 sexes. You'll have to adjust to the neological genderless pronouns based on "their" to understand this one. Also, don't read through all of Chapter 0 (the intro), as it is an exhaustive guide to the peoples of Kyerrion.

The Horse And His Boy by CS Lewis, 217 pages
  This was the first book I'd read in the Narnia series, at the age of 10. Favourite quote: "Nobody is told any story but his own."

American Dreams by Peter Carey, 10 pages

Comfort by Alice Munro, 35 pages
  An average woman mourns her hyperempirical husband, while reminiscing of little more than his battles with average and hypersubjective neighbours, on the subject of Judeo-Christian Creationism vs Evolutionism.

Medicine River by Thomas King, 249 pages
  Let's just say, I can't wait until the next unit, when I won't have to listen to Mr. Clanfield's(?) interpretations of the stories I read.

243.mousey's Poetry.Wounded Pride by [mousepoet]

And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street by Dr Seuss
  Can you believe I hadn't read this one yet? Anyways, it really is fun, the way the kid blows everything up, and meaningful, the way he ends up returning to the empirical for the adult's sake.

A super early beginner book with a bear in it by Stan and Jan Berenstain
  Starts with "Big. Big brown... Big brown bear." And goes on and on into a more elaborate description. There isn't any plot. Just a repetitive statement of what's on the page, with one item added every time. Things get pretty complicated, for a book with no plot. I wouldn't recommend it to read out loud to a kid who is too young to be starting to read himself.

Well, I keep forgetting to list the WC stories I read. Honest, guys. Anyways, here are the ones for today:
608.Let Me Feel Safe..Poetry by [kumquat]
415.Books in Progress.Untitled Historical Fiction and 415.Poetry.The 12 Days of Finals by [Annie]

QUOTE:

Creative activity could be described as a type of learning process where teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.
-Arthur Koestler, novelist and journalist (1905-1983)
My friend kept sending me zillions of random quotes about writing, and this is my favourite, because it doesn't seem as flowery as the rest.

Cannery Row by John Steinbeck, 196 pages
  That is episodic. The prose is heavy. And where I bother to think, I disagree with my professors on the meaning of a lot of chapters.
  One thing they did get right is the unity of the text. I know, I just said it's episodic. Consider, though, that the novel comes down and then up like an ocean tide. Cannery Row is a western seaside town, and one of the largest characters is always observing, waking, and sleeping with the tides.

Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell, 187 pages
  I can't believe I forgot to list this one!
  Anyways, it's funny in places, frustrating in others. I wanted to shake these old ladies and tell them how stupid they were being. I don't doubt that the narrator did too, for much of it.
  The first two chapters of this story were written as episodes for a litmag. Gaskell wrote the rest upon the request of her readers, over several years. It was finally published together in 1853.
  What was with readers back then? I wouldn't be that crazy about this book. Oh well. At least they weren't crazy about elitist doctoral writings with Latin strewn throughout, such as that which this book lightly criticizes, along with the rest of the fading British class system.

Mortimer by Robert Munsch, ill. Michael Martchenko
  This is the one where they're trying to make Mortimer be quiet in bed, but he just won't stop singing.
  I have a feeling I've been underemphasizing the influence Robert Munsch had on my childhood reading. He is one of the authors I'll want to remember for my kids, and yet, I haven't given him as much attention as Roald Dahl or Dr. Seuss. Bad, Vicki. Bad!!!

BIBLE: I've not been keeping track of every letter, since I'm reading through them so fast, and updating so little. Anyways, I've read the entire New Testament except the 2 Epistles to the Corinthians, and Revelation, all in NASB.

QUOTE:

If you think you are too small to be effective... you have obviously never been in bed with a mosquito.
~Graham Cooke
From a random poster.

Siren Song by Margaret Atwood
  This poem is really beautiful. I'm realizing that the reason why I have such varying tastes about Atwood's works, is that she employs such a wide range of techniques and voices, as wide as my range of likes and dislikes goes. To clarify, I'm not talking about story content, but its style of conveyance.

University has kept me rather busy. Even though I've certainly been doing a lot of reading, I haven't gotten around to recording it all until now.

Short story Course Pack readings for my English class:

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
A late Victorian woman with depression is subjected to a forced vacation and too much rest, causing her to lose her identity and go insane.

Thou Art The Man by Edgar Allan Poe
  This detective story's excitement isn't at all about whodunit. The guilty party was annoying enough that I suspected him early on. The truly surprising part of the story is the disgusting method the "detective" used to extract a confession from the murderer.
  The critical intro to this story says that Poe doesn't usually write in such a light authorial voice. This most certainly does sound lighter than his last story I read, although the subject matter is every bit as dark.

Happy Endings by Margaret Atwood
This story is interesting and humourous. I don't really agree with the opinion in the end:
"... Plots... are just one thing after another, a what and a what and a what.
  Now try How and Why."
Unless you are a five year old child, or maybe less, How and Why are impossible to forget. The What can be an agent for raising and answering these questions. Indeed, you shouldn't have to push yourself to "try How and Why" unless you have the critical thinking skills of a toddler. They should just come out. A good piece should give the critical reader breathing space, even flourishing space, but it should not force critical reading onto the entertainment reader. *sigh*

There Was Once by Margaret Atwood
I like the humour in this one. Atwood sarcastically attacks the traditional conventions in fairy tales.

The Courtship of Mr Lyon
A British Edwardian version of Beauty and the Beast.

Little Briar-Rose
Sleeping Beauty. A light, short version for children.

The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods
A version of Sleeping Beauty that is relatively feminist for its time. This one was adapted by Perrault. Not only does the story allude to Belle having some sexuality of her own, but a good deal of gore, rape, and cannibalism are removed.

Sun, Moon and Talia adapted by Basile
This is the most interesting Sleeping Beauty story I've ever read, as well as the most well written and narrated. It's too bad it doesn't preserve the spirit of the old wives who first told it. Of course, they were illiterate, and every one of them adapted the story to her own tastes. Basile, a (soldier?), makes this story much more mysogynist than a genuine fireside tale would have been. Unfortunately, this appears to be the oldest version of Sleeping Beauty available to me.

Raven Steals the Light
A creation story of Native North American origin.

Wee-sa-kay-jac and the Animals
Another North American creation story. I know that Wee-sa-kay-jac isn't a figure common to all the nations, but I don't know which one he is from.

How Horses Came Into The World
Blackfoot. Of course, this one would have been told after European settlers brought horses to North America, but it is clearly composed of traditional Blackfoot orature.

NASB Holy Bible readings:

Paul's Epistle to the Galatians

Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians

Gospel of Luke
This one covers a lot of material.

Gospel of John
This one gets quite personal. It also stimulates the reader to imagine the scenes.

Textbook selections from:

Worlds Together, Worlds Apart: A History of the Modern World from the Mongol Empire to the Present by Robert Tignor et. al.

Sociology In Our Times by Diane Kendall et. al.

Living In The Environment by G. Tyler Miller Jr. et. al.
My professor is going to contribute to editing this book for the first Canadian edition.

Discovering the Global Past: A Look at the Evidence by Wiesner, Wheeler, Doeringer, and Curtis

They Say, I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein

UNIVERSITY READING BEGINS